Semiotics of Gloves

A glove protects. A glove provides warmth. A glove provides safety. A glove possesses many different qualities. The presence of a glove in Cather in the Rye and Winter’s Bone is something that readers possibly overlook before delving into the true significance of the book. Once readers closely analyze the importance within a text, some realize that a small symbol can mean something more than life to a particular character. Both J.D. Salinger and Daniel Woodrell provide a divine illustration of how individual culture reflects the arbitrary connection of a specific symbol. In Kaja Silverman’s The Subject of Semiotics, theorist Charles Sanders Peirce demonstrates his specific knowledge about sign theory. He writes that a sign is “something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign” (Silverman 14). Both Jessup’s boxing gloves in Winter’s Bone and Allie’s baseball mitt in Catcher in the Rye creates a concrete understanding of symbolic significance. However, it is essential to recognize more than the symbolic relevance while analyzing a text. The semiotics of each glove provides a lucid understanding as to why the gloves are particularly meaningful within the culture of each story’s plot. For the sake of closely analyzing the importance of the gloves both between Dee and her brothers to their father, as well as Holden to his younger brother, Allie, it is important to recognize that the glove is representing a deceased figure within both of their lives. Although their cultures run completely parallel to one another, they are also tied together through the semiotics of each individual glove. A glove represents the way you handle certain situations, or getting a handle on the problem. It can also signify holding on to a part of the past. In both cultures it is deemed acceptable to believe that in this case, Dee and